This invention relates generally to telephony systems and more particularly to a method and system for managing remote resources in a telecommunications system.
Telecommunications is a rapidly growing industry that affects almost every other major industry. Because of the field""s rapid growth, the management of resources in telecommunications systems has become more difficult as the systems have become increasingly larger and more complex. In addition to the problems of monitoring any distributed network, modern telecommunications systems include resources that are incapable of autonomous notification, notifying the system that a disruption or failure has occurred without being prompted to provide the information. These resources must be monitored for operational and business-related reasons.
Traditional methods for monitoring these complex, distributed telecommunications systems periodically poll resources to determine whether a failure has occurred. Polling is preferably periodic to minimize bandwidth usage. A result of periodically polling, however, is that resources cannot be monitored with the desired accuracy. Thus, disruptions occurring between consecutive polls may go unnoticed.
In accordance with the present invention, a method and system for managing remote resources in a telecommunications system are provided that substantially eliminate or reduce the disadvantages or problems associated with previously developed methods and systems. In particular, the present invention identifies intermediate disruptions or failures in managed resources that occur between consecutive polls.
In one embodiment of the present invention, a resource management station is provided for a distributed system. The resource management station includes a managed resources store operable to store for each of a plurality of remote managed resources a previous value of a status of the remote managed resource and a previous value of a parameter indicative of status changes by the remote managed resource. A polling engine is operable to periodically poll each remote managed resource for a current value of the status and current value of the parameter. A resource manager is operable to determine whether a status change occurred in the remote managed resource by comparing the previous and current values of the status. The resource manager is further operable to determine whether an intermediate status change occurred by comparing the previous and current values of the parameter.
Technical advantages of the present invention include providing an improved resource management system and method for a telecommunications system. In particular, disruptions or failures in managed resources that occur between polls are identified, even in those situations in which a managed resource is in a same state at the times of the consecutive polls. This allows notification of such intermediate state changes to be provided to the appropriate systems. As a result, complete state information is available for resources that are unable to provide autonomous notification without the need for continuous polling. In addition, the ability to identify state changes between consecutive polls allows for longer intervals between polls without a corresponding decrease in accuracy of state information. Accordingly, bandwidth usage is minimized.
Other technical advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent to one skilled in the art from the following figures, description and claims.